Station, Honor, & Dishonor - 1 Timothy: 6 - Pt. 1

Alright, please remain standing now as we read through 1st

Timothy, the last two chapters there. So you have a handout, you can open your scriptures, 1st

Timothy chapter 5, verse 1. Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father.

Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity.

Page 3, continues the text, honor widows who are really widows, but if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents, for this is acceptable before God.

Now she who is really a widow and left alone trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.

But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives, and these things command that they may be blameless, but if anyone does not provide for his own and especially for those of his household, he is denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Do not let a widow under 60 years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man, well reported for good works.

If she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saint's feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work, but refuse the younger widows, for when they have begun to grow wanton against Christ, they desire to marry, having condemnation because they have cast off their first faith, and besides, they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not.

Therefore, I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the home, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.

For some have already turned aside after Satan. If any believing man or woman has widows, let them relieve them, and do not let the church be burdened that it may relieve those who are really widows.

Verse 17, let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine, for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, and the laborer is worthy of his wages.

Do not receive an accusation against an elder, except from two or three witnesses. Those who are sinning rebuke in the presence of all, that the rest also may fear.

I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality.

Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people's sins. Keep yourself pure.

No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities.

Some men's sins are clearly evident, preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later.

Likewise, the good works of some are clearly evident, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden.

Chapter 6, verse 1, let as many bond servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and his doctrine may not be blasphemed.

And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved.

Teach and exhort these things. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our

Lord Jesus Christ, under the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, constant friction, that's what the majority text has, constant friction of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.

From such, withdraw yourself. Now godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out, and having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.

But those who desire to be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith and their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many errors.

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called, and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

I urge you, in the sight of God, who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus, who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our

Lord Jesus Christ appearing, which he will manifest in his own time, he who is the blessed and only

Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power, amen.

Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living

God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

O Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

By professing it, some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be with you, amen.

You may be seated. Chapter five and chapter six are significantly connected, and you can see that there's a list throughout it of how to deal with people in different stations in terms of relationship.

So it continues there with station, honor, and dishonor, but we have a significant move in chapter six towards dealing with the pastoral office.

So we've seen in chapter five, we saw relationships of sex and age, so men and women that are older and younger, how to deal with each other.

And I had a chart for you on page two of the different institutions. We had household, church, and state, and the different stations there, and I thought that giving you that outline again would be helpful to you as you consider what we continue to go through here.

We talked about the duty of caring for true widows last time and the qualifications there, and how it's best for households to take care of their own and for clans to take care of their own, that the church is the safety net to fall back on for those who are the worthy poor who need ongoing support in a situation where they don't have a house or clan to care for them.

Now, we also saw warnings about how younger widows can have dangers, and those are dangers for women generally to avoid being in a position where they are simply going about other people's business, being idle, gossips, being officious and giving counsel, saying things that ought not to be said.

And there was a positive pattern of what the young woman ought to do, and say what she should focus on in burying and raising children, managing the house, ruling it well, and doing good works in the house, focusing on the well -being of the household, and then we talked about the idea of how this removes a cause for attack on the

Christian faith. And all of this together served to make it so that centralized resources are able to be preserved to deal with true emergencies or true cases where there's no one to care for someone.

So, there should be a focus on the household so that decentralized resources are able to care for things based upon clans and families.

So, there's an emphasis on the household and for strong households to be built. Now, at the same time, we then get into the work, the positive work of the church is supposed to be done in terms of elders.

On page 5, chapter 5, verse 17, it says, let elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor.

The honor there is in reference to the honor owed to the widow, and so an elder is expected to generally have a wife, and so that was where that was.

There was an emphasis on the importance of elders ruling well and of rewarding that well, and those who rule in word, who work in word and doctrine especially, in other words, dealing with the text of scripture and systematizing the doctrine to make it known and to help to make it be learned, that's what you want to focus on.

The church is supposed to focus on teaching the truth and holding the truth up for the world to see, and you want the elders focused upon that work of teaching truth, organizing truth to make it more teachable, and this idea of holding it up for the world to see, and for the church to learn and grow and mature.

So those who put time into that, who do that work, are to be viewed as especially valuable.

Now page 6 talks about the importance of elders being careful in terms of their public appointments of officers with laying out of hands and also in the administration of justice to be impartial.

Verse 23 talks about how there's a danger that elders would start to take on asceticism and take on human rules to protect themselves from being perceived in ways that are bad, and so like Timothy apparently was avoiding drinking all alcohol to the point that he was not using it when he needed it in regard to his own stomach, and so Paul has to command him there, so there's an order to avoid asceticism and legalism and to use things for the proper way that God has appointed them.

And then there's this idea that this whole process of trying to do your job as an elder is something that it's not immediately, it doesn't bring everything about immediately.

Proper teaching, proper governance, it doesn't solve everything right away.

It's not a utopian dream that creates a perfect city immediately.

It is something however that dramatically alters things, it improves things across time. There can be big shifts, there can be big reformations, there can be big improvements that are quick, but there are also times when there's just gradual improvement bit by bit.

Here a line, there a line, precept upon precept, brick upon brick, and that work is not to be despised, and so we're reminded at the end of chapter five that some men's sins are clearly evident preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later.

You deal with people in partiality and it's still going to result in, you can have proper process and you can still have the idea that there's a delay of justice.

Twenty -five, likewise the good works of some are clearly evident and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden.

So you have those that are good that could be having their hands laid on them, that can be delayed sometimes, and you can have those that are worthy of receiving discipline, that being delayed sometimes, and so there's the rewards of the righteous and the penalties of the unrighteous, these things in time are sometimes delayed even when proper process is observed, and so we have this idea of impartiality and patience being the things that are emphasized there, enduring in the work.

So now we're in chapter six and we have these relationships of honor that have been talked about throughout the whole book, but we continue in chapter six, verse one, and we get into a section that is particularly beloved and well understood and not hated at all in our time, the section on slaves.

Chapter six, verse one, let as many bond servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor so that the name of God and his doctrine may not be blasphemed.

And those who having believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren.

And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved.

Teach and exhort these things. Okay, so here's how southern preachers in the antebellum south sometimes would teach this.

Slaves just need to deal with being slaves forever, and that's just the way it is, and you just need to serve your master forever.

This is how modern preachers tend to teach this, they say this. Slavery in all cases is always wrong, and Paul was just talking about behaviors that would generally be effective for helping to bring about conversion, and you know, the slave holders that were believers needed to repent of having slaves in all situations, and honestly

I don't really understand how you could have any slave holders in your congregation and why aren't they being church disciplined out.

That's kind of the modern reading. So let me tell you, I think both of those are wrong, and let me explain to you what I think this is saying.

What this is teaching is, first of all, it assumes the background of the Old Testament teaching on slavery.

Kidnapping a person and making them a slave unjustly is a capital crime.

If you steal a person, that's a capital crime. When a person kidnaps another person, the appropriate response of the state is to execute that person publicly.

So hopefully that makes clear my position and the Bible's position on unjust enslavement.

See a significant reduction in child trafficking if we had public executions for child traffickers.

Alright, so now, besides that, what does the Bible teach about slavery?

Well, the Bible teaches about slavery that there are four ways for a person to be justly enslaved.

First, a person who wages unjust warfare, if he has taken prisoner, can be enslaved.

If he repents of his unjust warfare and seeks to come under discipleship, he becomes a member of the visible church and has a limit on his slavery of six years of labor.

It's a seven -year time period with the assumption of the Old Testament process of the one out of those seven years being a rest year, so six years of labor.

Our American system of bankruptcy is a taking of seven years, we have this time period of seven years for maximum time period that you can have to go paying debts before you could theoretically declare bankruptcy again if you had to go through bankruptcy and it's based upon that idea of a maximum enslavement.

The next way relates to that bankruptcy idea and that is debt. You borrow money, you give a personal guarantee, you don't pay the money off, you can be forced to do work to pay for it.

You go, well that sounds real harsh. That's interesting because we have a system that does exactly that. If you don't pay debts, somebody can file a judgment and then the court will take money out of your bank account and you go,

I worked for that money and you took it from me without my consent. Well, I actually gave you consent when you borrowed the money, right, so that right there.

So it is, you can force somebody to do work to repay debts for a maximum of six years.

Now, the other way of enslavement is as restitution for a crime.

Let's say you steal something from somebody else. You can be forced in the Bible to do labor to make repayment.

You go, I stole the thing but I immediately destroyed it, ha, ha, ha, that was really fun, burning your car.

So I can't repay you, ha, ha, ha, oh, that's regrettable for you because now you're going to have to forcibly do labor for a period of time to repay that vehicle and a multiple of it.

Okay, so those are the biblical systems for that. Here's the fourth way. If somebody so appreciates you as a master that they choose to voluntarily enter into your service for lifelong enslavement.

The Old Testament has this symbol for it. If they want that, then what you have to do as the master is you have to, you go, okay, you really want to do this?

Okay, here's the symbol for this. We're going to take a metal rod, we're going to put your ear up against the doorpost of the house, okay, so that's a symbol, the doorpost is a symbol for the household, right?

And then there's the ear there and you pierce the guy's ear, okay, so this is, the guy has given his consent, he's given his consent to the point where he said, this is worth being your slave to the point that it's worth going through a moment of pain where you're going to give me this earring, and the guy had to be there long enough for you to be able to aim, right?

This is a right of rescission for a period of prolonged thinking with a short -term pain.

Are you sure? Are you really sure? Okay, so these are the four mechanisms that were used for just enslavement.

For those who are simply kidnapped, guess what? There's no obligation to stay.

You can run away whenever. That's unjust imprisonment, that's kidnapping, that's being an unjust war prisoner, whatever it is, you can run away.

So the system of perpetual enslavement that existed in the

South in America before the war between the states of chattel slavery where slaves did not have rights under law and they were treated as property and could not ever get their freedom if their master did not want to give it to them was an unjust system of enslavement and those slaves would have had a moral right to run away.

So that right there, when this is talking, this is talking about slaves and it assumes the background information of just enslavement.

It does not assume that every chattel slave in Rome had a duty to forever stay with their masters regardless of the fact that they were stolen or not.

Now, by the way, the American system of slavery in the South was taken from Roman law.

So the chattel system of slavery is exactly the system that was put into law from Roman code into American code except for this.

In the Roman code, in the Roman code, the master had the right to execute his slaves at will.

So there was a more heinous power there with that system.

Paul is not approving of the Roman system of slavery and he is not approving of the

American system of slavery that worked. What he is doing is he is talking about the duties of slaves and what's assumed here is the background of the law of God regarding slavery beside it.

Now, when we look at unjust systems of slavery, we sometimes just assume that every slave in that system of unjust enslavement was enslaved unjustly.

Let me tell you something shocking for just a second. When you have unjust systems, sometimes people get punished justly.

Sometimes people in Rome were enslaved because they stole. Sometimes, people in Rome were enslaved as war prisoners where their side was in the wrong.

Rome started a lot of wars unjustly, like a lot. But that's also the case that sometimes the other party was at fault.

Sometimes people didn't pay their debts and were enslaved for it. So there are some times where people in Rome were enslaved justly.

So, when Paul is talking here, he says that as many bond servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor.

Being under the yoke, are you familiar with the term yoke being used anywhere else in scripture to refer to relationships of working together?

So you think about marriage being yoked together, that's a covenant relationship. You talk about fellow officers working together, that is a yoking relationship that is covenanted.

You can talk about the idea of fellowshipping with others, and that's a covenanted relationship.

Being under the yoke here is a reference to the idea of being in a covenant where you have this obligation.

So in other words, this assumes just enslavement. These duties are for people who have been justly enslaved.

So this is not saying let as many as have been kidnapped count their masters worthy of all honor.

Not what the text is saying. What the text is saying is let everybody who has a legitimate covenant duty of service count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and his doctrine may not be blasphemed.

And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they're brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved.

Teach and exhort these things. Taking a text like this and using it to require perpetual service from a believing slave who had not volunteered for perpetual service is wicked twisting of Scripture.

Taking this and saying if you have legitimate reason why you owe service, give it and do it well, and don't despise your brother.

Don't think, well, I know I damaged your property and I owe you to repay for it, but I think because you're a brother, you should just forgive me.

That's wicked. We think because you're a brother, my duties to you, you should just relieve me of.

That's wicked. We should instead look upon our duties where we owe things to our brothers as having more weight.

So again, a bond servant's a slave, a servant by covenant authority who is part of the household.

He's under the yoke, he has a duty to work in the covenant. He's either sworn allegiance by voluntary submission, become a prisoner of war justly, or is someone who owes debt repayment or deserves to have to repay for criminal punishment.

Masters of estates, the heads of the house, are due honor for their station.

That's true of legitimate enslavement. That's true of wage employees.

That's true of daughters and sons. So masters of the estates are due honor by their station.

There's a minimum duty that they have to give in order for somebody to not have the right to run away, and that is, you can find this, there's code in the book of Exodus about the requirements even for a wife who has no dowry.

And something that applies to slaves in general would be a dwelling place, clothing, and food and drink.

So if you're not being provided for, that would give right to run away even if there's a just cause for requiring your work.

A rejection of the authority of the heads of house in doctrine, so saying like, you know, hey, the household doesn't actually have any authority, especially the master of the estate thing, that would be something that causes stumbling in others and blasphemes

God. In particular cases where there's a just duty to submit, to call something not obligatory is also giving cause for stumbling and also blasphemes

God. And to emphasize again, being a brother in the faith, a brother in the church, and a co -heir of the kingdom does not eliminate the duties of covenant institutions.

In fact, it strengthens the duties of authority and submission. All right, let's go to page seven.

Page seven, verse three. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our

Lord Jesus Christ and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud knowing nothing but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, constant friction of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.

From such, withdraw yourself. So in other words, the rejection of the law order of the household is a sign of a false teacher.

It's a sign of a false teacher. So, I want you to understand, every preacher that teaches egalitarianism, that the husband is not in a position of authority over the wife, is giving you strong reason, warned to by Paul, to view them as a false teacher.

Furthermore, rejecting the legitimate order of heads of house with children, with wage servants, and with those who have been justly enslaved, is to throw that off.

This is a sign for false teachers if they do not like the household order that God's law has established.

A throwing off of the law in general is a sign of that, but a hatred of the household is a hatred of the basic order of society that was established even in the creation order.

The household was instituted before the fall. These teachers that reject the law order of the household are proud because they think they know better than God how men ought to live their lives.

They know nothing. They don't know anything even about the most basic relationships of life. And they're obsessed with disputes and arguments over words.

They view them as playthings. Words. They view words as playthings.

Rather than seeking to deal with meaning that's communicated by words and the effects of how things are said in terms of creating stumbling blocks or not, there's a wrangling over words themselves.

And so these things are indicators that a person is not concerned to see right order, but they're proud know -nothings who like to argue.

Examples of this in our time, people who claim to believe the Bible but are egalitarian, they believe that the husband and wife are of equal authority in the home and to a large extent will end up undermining all the authority structures in the home.

You find a tendency to reject the patient, just spanking of children amongst those same types of groups.

So there's a throwing off of those orders. Feminists who teach that there are no distinctions that should differentiate man and woman or even who teach that women should rule over men, they are also of like kind.

And we find this with Marxists. So our society is filled with people who want to appeal to the idea of class struggle, station struggle, struggle between the privileged and the less privileged, between the lower middle class and the middle middle class.

There's always somebody to envy, hate, or be angry with and somebody that you should fight with for power in the institution, whatever institution you can find, however small or petty, however great and far away, just make sure to have envy and covetousness associated with whatever blessings anybody else has.

That teaching, which has been popularized with BLM and the various types of intersectionality and talking about how there are different groups that need to be dealt with and realize that there's some sort of a way in which they're not viewed as normative.

All of these things are used as mechanisms to talk about oppression and to find ways where just authority is to be viewed as oppression.

There's enough real oppression in the world, we don't need to go around making up oppression. We know the difference between tyranny and legitimate authority based upon God's word.

It provides the law order for us to understand. So these behaviors of being proud, knowing nothing, arguing over words rather than the concern for the meaning and the effects of the words, not consenting to the wholesome words that are in Scripture.

These things are behaviors that lead to, sorry, they come from, no,

I'm sorry, they lead to. Just trying to confuse you. These things lead to envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicion, and constant friction.

Okay, envy. So if there's pride and know -nothingness and an obsession with just fighting about words, that's something that encourages envy because, well, why do you get to decide?

How come I don't get to decide? That leads to strife. There's never a peace. There's never an end to the fight.

There's a reviling, a hatred of the authority and the order and the truth.

There's evil suspicion about the motives of the other person so that there's always an assumption that what's being said on the other side is just a justification after the fact.

Freudian psychology teaches that arguments are always just rationalizations of whatever a person wants.

You see, Freudian psychology is wicked, okay? It teaches that man is essentially an irrational animal that simply uses arguments in a power dynamic.

This is what post -modernism does. This is what intersectionality and all of these new

Marxist theories do, where reason is to be viewed as a creation of matter.

Reason is not a creation of matter. Reason is not even a spiritual creation of God. Reason is an eternal attribute of God.

God is reason. He is the logos.

He is the wisdom. The truth is God. Rationality is not only embedded in the very nature of truth.

Rationality is embedded in the very nature of God. Rationality is eternal, and the image of God is rationality.

Arguments are not just after -the -fact justifications for power. They can be, and that's wicked.

But truth is the only thing that can give legitimacy to power.

Authority comes from the Word of God. The authority of truth is what grants authority to anybody under God.

He grants authority with institutions, and he gives the authority in those institutions with the purpose of those in authority knowing, applying, and spreading the truth.

So these doctrines and behaviors cause envy, they encourage it, they encourage strife, they encourage reviling, they encourage evil suspicion about others, and they encourage constant friction.

There's never peace, never enjoyment. There's always strife. Those things come from men of corrupt mind.

Their minds are corrupt because they're lacking in truth, they're believing falsehood. And they also have a wrong view of the good.

They think that godliness, they think that authority, they think that piety, they think that a sense of duty is for the purpose of gain.

In other words, they want to say, I'm the authority and you should obey me, because they think causing other people to obey them is a mechanism by which they can extract economic value.

They suppose that godliness is a means of gain. Well, it is a means of gain. It's a means of gain in that godliness, piety, dutifulness, encourages you to grow in the knowledge of the truth, the knowledge of God.

That's how it's a means of gain. The good life is the life of applying God's law, and the good life is the life that encourages growth in the knowledge of God.

So it is a means of gain, but it's not a means of gain principally for anything except for the knowledge of God.

It is not a means of gain principally for power. It's not a means of gain principally for money, or pleasure, or honors, and reputation.

Dutifulness, piety, is a means of growing in the knowledge of God. It should not be viewed as a manipulation mechanism to get what you want out of people.

For people who do that, who use the systems of piety, twisting the words of truth for their own destruction, taking the institutions that God has given and using them in a destructive way, from such, whether we're talking about the household, the church, or the state, from such withdraw yourself.

There's a great quote down here from Matthew Poole that I don't have time to walk through in total, but I encourage you to read it as he talked about this.

The portion I cut out, he was using the TR as regards that, so his comments was on the

Greek term that is not in the majority text, and so I cut that portion out, though it's got a good set of things, and some of the applications continue to apply.

The idea of one who is engaged in constant friction, he says this about one who's engaged in useless wrangling, avoid disputations of sophisters, sophisters are ones who argue for the sake of arguing, arguing for the sake of power, arguing for their amusement.

Avoid disputations of sophisters, not candid for the finding out of truth, but perverse and litigious merely for masteries, so the four masteries, the four power, using argumentation and systems for the sake of power, the idea of manipulating argumentation and systems for dispute resolution for power, which he says proceed for men corrupt as to their understanding and judgment, supposing that gain is godliness, all whose religion is gain of riches or reputation.

From such withdraw yourself, with such men have nothing to do, avoid them in your private converse and cast them out of the church if their faults be public scandals and they be contumacious.

It's the duty of Christians to withdraw from such. Page 8, now godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world and it's certain we can carry nothing out and having food and clothing with these we shall be content, but those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

So what Paul does first here is he shows reasons why money is not the highest good, it's not the best thing.

There's godliness with contentment is great gain, this is in contrast to thinking godliness is for the purpose of extracting reputation, wealth, power, pleasure.

Instead, look, there is great value to being pious, to being godly, to being dutiful and having contentment, there's great gain in that, it's just different from the gain that abusers of the church might see, for we brought nothing into this world and it's certain we can carry nothing out.

So in other words, we didn't start with any money and we're not going to be able to take our money with us.

So that being the case, money is not the good, it can be lost. If the purpose of life is to get money, then life is meaningless, because money is not something you can hold on to in the long run, you're going to lose it, no matter how much you get, you're going to lose it, because you're going to die.

So if money is the purpose of life, your life is meaningless. So instead, we should see what are those things that are necessary for survival, what's our daily bread on the most minimal level as an individual?

Food and clothing. Now, I think that food and clothing is assuming your possession of those, having a dwelling is typically listed in other places of scripture where that is, but this idea that you have food and clothing, you can use your daily necessities.

Clothing is a necessity. You go, what's the difference between a necessity and not a necessity? Well, necessity means necessary to perform your duty.

Necessary to survive is different, you don't need clothing to survive, why do you need clothing?

To do your duty of covering your nakedness. So the idea of necessity has to do with necessity for the performance of duty.

So those who have things that are necessary for their duties at this time have their daily bread.

So having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.

So is this saying that it's wrong to desire to have anything more than your food and clothing that you need to use today?

It is not. We are taught to pursue dominion, we are taught that we should seek to leave an inheritance to our children and our children's children, we are taught that it's a blessing to receive economic prosperity, and we are to do this work, we're even told,

Paul commands us elsewhere in Ephesians. He says, to work with your hands that you may have something to give.

To have something to give very specifically requires that you have more than you need for your own immediate duties, because if you have something you need for your own immediate duties and you give it to somebody else and prevent yourself from being able to do your immediate duties, that's sin.

If you need to feed your own children and you hand that food to somebody else, you have stolen it from your children.

So there's a duty to have enough for yourself and then anybody who is under your authority, and there's a duty to pursue more.

So the point here, the idea of pursuit of riches, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.

The context is those who view godliness as a means of gaining money, we're talking about a disorder of desire where you view your money as the highest good, and so the desire to be rich, lots of people desire to be rich because they think the good life is the life of being rich.

You need to understand this, if you have money, that's not a vacation.

Having money is a promotion with a requirement to do more work. The more property you have, the more you have a job from God to manage and a duty to use for the good of your neighbor, especially your brother, and for the glory of God.

Those who desire to be rich in order to go and relax and enjoy themselves and not do more good work, those who desire money as the good, those who have a disordered desire for money, those who desire money more than they ought, fall into temptation and a snare.

And money is a common false god, the pursuit of money, even righteously, has the temptation to make it a god.

To think, oh, if only I had more money, I could solve all my problems, everything would be easy.

Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful lusts.

When money starts to become a power, you go, you know, I can pursue my pleasures with this money, or I can pursue personal power or reputation, and you start to pursue these other things.

They can become mechanisms to pursue other common false gods. Now, is honor or power or money or pleasure, reputation, or any of these things bad?

No, they are good gifts of God to be used in their proper place for their proper end of the spread of the knowledge of God.

But there's a temptation. As you grow in the possession of things in this world, the government of yourself has to be better and better.

A person with a mediocre competency in governing themselves, handed a huge domain, will manage that thing horrifically.

The more you have to govern, the better you need to be, the more that's required of you, the more you'll be called to give an account for.

You should pursue good work, and you should pursue increases of honor, and prosperity, and reputation, and power through lawful means to do good work, but you have to understand you are not seeking a vacation with those things, you are seeking a job promotion.

Verse 10, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

The love of money is not just viewing money as valuable, it's viewing money as the good.

It's a disordered valuation of it. It's a desire for it that's too strong because you value it too highly.

The love of money, viewing money as the good, is a root of all kinds of evil.

Every kind of evil desire and every kind of evil action has come from a false view of the good, and every kind of evil comes from putting anything in the place of God.

When you value money as much as or more than God, that is called mammon.

That is money worshipped. There's an order of desires.

We are to seek the glory of God above all things, and we're supposed to pursue everything else as a means to glorify

God. Which thing to pursue at a given time involves the balance of life?

When should you sit and read your Bible? When should you go and work? When should you be doing something to go bless somebody else by your voluntary service?

When should you be doing something actively to show respect to a person in station? Which good work to do when is based upon balance and based upon prioritization and valuation for the purpose of the glory of God?

God gives us certain rules to understand when certain things should happen. For example, He gives us the

Sabbath to know how often we should be getting together for church, but we also have to deal with evaluating what occurs around us.

The love of money makes it so you're going to do all sorts of wrong stuff in the wrong moment. Rather than using your money to serve somebody, you hoard it.

Rather than going and investing to increase your dominion, you hold onto it and put it under your mattress because you're worried about losing it.

Rather than doing things to show kindness or hospitality or generosity, we take the money and hoard it up for our own pleasures.

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil for which some have strayed from the faith and their greediness and pierced themselves through with many arrows.

We're talking about preachers and the love of money in regard to preachers. Let me tell you some of the temptations of a preacher for money.

To not be doctrinally rigorous is a temptation because it makes it so you have less people.

To not put into place the system of government that limits authority and restrains power because it makes it so you have to spend more time and effort.

To not deal with conflict, to not have the worship be carefully ordered to please

God rather than men. These are the types of temptations that exist. When you look around in America, one of the best explanations for the way most churches teach, worship, and govern is the love of money.

Why is it organized this way? Is it because the Bible says so? Oh no, that's not it.

This is designed as a profit mechanism to extract dollars. That will answer the question for you as to why a church is that way in America in,

I would dare say, most cases where a place calls itself a church. So the love of money, false doctrine about what's good causes every kind of evil.

The temptation towards false goods to depart from the true good is something to be battled.

There is sorrow caused by having the false good. When you view something as more valuable than God, it causes all kinds of sorrows because the world is not designed for the worship of money.

The world is not designed for the worship of human power. The world is designed for the worship of the triune

God. And when you put things around the altar of a false

God, it messes up the arrangement of the whole room. I don't have time to go through it.

I would encourage you on your own to study the larger catechism, questions 146, 147, and 148 about contentment in the 10th commandment.

I may have time to go through it tonight, we'll see. But that is something that will help you to think about how to be content and what contentment looks like in pursuing the knowledge of God.

Comments, questions, objections from the voting members and those with speaking rights? Okay, let's pray.

Father, we ask that you would bless the reading and preaching of your Word, that you would help us to not be seduced by the pursuit of money or pleasure or power or honor or reputation, but to view you as the good and to desire to know you more and to not disorder our lives chasing after false gods.

We ask that you would free us from that. We know that we all are tempted and give in to pursuing false gods, that our sins come from valuing things above you.

And everything that we value above you is an idol. And so, Father, we ask that you would help us to put off all sins and things that weigh us down and that you would cause us to put on the things that are godliness and piety.

We ask that you would subdue in us the desire for things that's inordinate and inappropriate and cause us to desire you more.